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But the problem is that you see black men in Star Trek being treated exactly the same as their white colleagues...

Well, I wouldn't say "exactly," since I believe there are various aspects of the franchise where that doesn't always ring true. Moreover, there are other men of color: Asian men, non-white Hispanic/Latino men, or Native American men who can be be looked at (since race is more than the "black" and "white" binary) in terms of how they are depicted in contrast to the white male characters, but I do get your point in the hypothetical attempt to show gay couples as normal as any other heterosexual couple.

As someone brought out, maybe the tentative 2013 sequel will have such a couple.

@ Destructor : Word on Bakula. I totally agree with your comment on ST use of metaphors and also the idea to not specifically address the issue but for instance giving Bashir a male partner instead.

__________________
“It is the struggle itself that is most important. We must strive to be more than we are. It does not matter that we will not reach our ultimate goal. The effort itself yields its own reward.” GR

Oh jeez. You know how you write a gay character on Star Trek? You write a straight character and merely flip the gender of whom they're attracted to. That. Is. It.

Takeru wrote:

J. Allen wrote:

To be fair, portraying a gay person on screen, and doing them justice, is rather difficult.

It's not difficult at all, all you have to do is take a script, pick a random guest star who mentions his wife and replace the word "wife" with "husband".
Don't try to make a "gay episode" and doing them justice or you end up with David Gerrold's Blood and Fire which was written for TNG and filmed for the TOS fan series. The gay part of Blood and Fire was almost offensively bad, they have a gay couple and one of them kills himself because of Space AIDS.

I'm sure the episode was rejected for TNG not because of the gay couple (if that was a problem they could have made them a straight couple) but because it was stupid.
The couple served no purpose other than showing the audience that gay people have feelings too "See, they're kissing and are happy, now one of them is dead and the other one is really devastated and angry but in the end he gets better!". Well, thank you David Gerrold, you totally showed the audience that gay couples are regular people, who would have thought?! Too bad you didn't treat them like regular people but made them the centerpiece of your AIDS allegory and death drama instead.

I'll address both of these together. The primary reason why it's difficult to write for a gay character is because it is a precarious balance. You have to do justice to the character, mollify the suits who make the decisions from on high, and convey it to the audience in a way that is not ham handed.

For someone like me, it's easy to write a gay character. However, the process doesn't end with me. It has to go over well with the head writer, and the director, and all of the people involved in making the decisions for each episode.

Any one of those steps can kill off that character. I have no doubt that there were writers pushing good ideas, but those ideas were snuffed out before they ever made it past the primary stages. That's mainly due to issues with the suits and the audience. Only recently has it been acceptable to write gay characters that weren't lampooning gay people in general.

Over time, there will be gay characters. Like I said earlier, I believe the next series will likely have a gay character. It's the audience that ultimately makes that decision, and I think audiences are ready, their prejudices are changing. Write a gay Will Riker type character and you'd see the moral majority come out in force. Is it a double standard? You bet your ass. Still, that, too, is changing.

We still have a long way to go in TV land, though. Look how long it took women to get fairly represented, and there are billions of them! Writing a gay character and seeing him or her actually come into existence on Star Trek is something I've wanted to see for a long time. Maybe, finally, we'll see it happen. Studios are starting to see that gay people make up a large chunk of their viewing audience, and that can only lead to better representation in shows and movies. I just want it tastefully done by someone who knows what they're doing. I'd rather it be done right than half assed and some moron fuck it up for everyone else.

The second was in a scene where I believe Data is asking Guinan about love or mating or something along those lines. Whoopi's line was, "When a man and a woman fall in love" but she changed the line to, "When two people fall in love".
.

The second was in a scene where I believe Data is asking Guinan about love or mating or something along those lines. Whoopi's line was, "When a man and a woman fall in love" but she changed the line to, "When two people fall in love".
.

And for that matter, Kirk says something similar in "Balance of Terror:" "Since the days of the first wooden vessels, all shipmasters have had one happy privilege: that of uniting two people in the bonds of matrimony."

Bakula should have been the first gay Captain, now that I think about it.

nooo he was too hunky keep him straight XD

LOL! I have a hard time NOT imaging Bakula in his first moments of Quantum Leap, white full body suit....

__________________
“It is the struggle itself that is most important. We must strive to be more than we are. It does not matter that we will not reach our ultimate goal. The effort itself yields its own reward.” GR

Bakula should have been the first gay Captain, now that I think about it.

nooo he was too hunky keep him straight XD

LOL! I have a hard time NOT imaging Bakula in his first moments of Quantum Leap, white full body suit....

-Mr. Lucas voice-
Glass of water for Tot.

Moral outrage from radical news outlets be damned, they'd had the teenage male demographic eating out of their hands.

Plus the homosexual and bisexual female viewers.

In my own stories, I address this, though I think I made complicated stuff for some folks and confused them even more.

Cassy, my red haired alien girl, who's the main character of all my stories, might appear to be just an attractive girl with cat eyes, and she has no idea where she came from, she is from a race of people who are pretty much all girls, just different plumbing down there, and Cassy is a 'male' if one wants to be technical. She is currently married to a human female, and has had an on again/off again thing going on with the enigmatic Admiral Robert April over the past 2 centuries, and at one time dated an Andorian female. Now I guess Cassy could be considering pansexual or omnisexual.

I think homosexual characters will be no problem with Trek, and be damned the bible thumpers, since they, at least the Evangelicals, hate the idea of alien life to begin with and would not be big on Trek, anyhow. And since Trek's all about equality and man kind having finally grown up and put childish differences into the garbage can, I say go for it. If doctor Who can have gay/bi/pan/omni sexual, so can Trek....hell....we saw an elderly lesbian couple in the 2006-2007 Doctor Who season......hell we saw a human woman with a cat man, and had a liter of kittens that can speak.

__________________
The meaning of the apocalypse is the opposite of what most people think. It does not mean the end of the world; it means the revealing of hidden secrets and the beginning of a heaven on earth. The apocalypse is starting now.

@ Destructor : Word on Bakula. I totally agree with your comment on ST use of metaphors and also the idea to not specifically address the issue but for instance giving Bashir a male partner instead.

They did didn't they? Reading between the lines Garak totally wanted him, but had to settle for Zyal when he wouldn't get over Dax.
And even then he probably only plumped for her because the fact her father would hate the idea was just too tasty for him to pass up.
Perhaps the schism between Dukat and Garak is one of ex-lovers....and perhaps an operative of the obsidian order being caught with a high ranking military official, with a family, was the scandal that got Garak exiled in the first place!
Oh this stuff just writes itself doesn't it!

Bry_Sinclair wrote:

Destructor wrote:

Bakula should have been the first gay Captain, now that I think about it.

That would have made him at least one interesting character trait.

I'm sure the gay community would prefer a role model who can act.
Actually, scratch that, have you SEEN John Barrowman on Doctor Who? Hmmm...maybe not.

Still, I remember huge rumours during the time of First Contact that Lt Hawk had a scene when he mentioned a husband that got cut out of the movie, whether that's true or not we'll probably never know I guess.

__________________
I don't care what anyone thinks, when I hit the iceberg the iceberg sinks!

Still, I remember huge rumours during the time of First Contact that Lt Hawk had a scene when he mentioned a husband that got cut out of the movie, whether that's true or not we'll probably never know I guess.

Neal McDonough denied this in an interview. Still, the rumour is persistent enough that the character was gay in the novels.

@ Destructor : Word on Bakula. I totally agree with your comment on ST use of metaphors and also the idea to not specifically address the issue but for instance giving Bashir a male partner instead.

They did didn't they? Reading between the lines Garak totally wanted him, but had to settle for Zyal when he wouldn't get over Dax.
And even then he probably only plumped for her because the fact her father would hate the idea was just too tasty for him to pass up.
Perhaps the schism between Dukat and Garak is one of ex-lovers....and perhaps an operative of the obsidian order being caught with a high ranking military official, with a family, was the scandal that got Garak exiled in the first place!
Oh this stuff just writes itself doesn't it!

Bry_Sinclair wrote:

Destructor wrote:

Bakula should have been the first gay Captain, now that I think about it.

That would have made him at least one interesting character trait.

I'm sure the gay community would prefer a role model who can act.
Actually, scratch that, have you SEEN John Barrowman on Doctor Who? Hmmm...maybe not.

Given that Jack was a popular character, Barrowman seemed to be doing it just fine.

__________________
The meaning of the apocalypse is the opposite of what most people think. It does not mean the end of the world; it means the revealing of hidden secrets and the beginning of a heaven on earth. The apocalypse is starting now.